Thursday, June 07, 2007

The state's highest court has invalidated the body search of a drug offender, effectively wiping out his conviction by ruling yesterday that police had not given him enough privacy when they checked a common drug-stashing location: between his buttocks.

Baltimore County detectives could have searched the Fallston man at a police station or "in the privacy of a police van," Judge Clayton Greene Jr. wrote for the majority of the Court of Appeals. Instead, a gloved investigator searched John August Paulino at night at the Dundalk carwash where he was arrested and where his friends who were with him might have seen.

Greene called the search unconstitutional and unreasonable, writing that it was not an emergency and should not have been done in public.

But Judge Lynne A. Battaglia, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, disagreed, saying that the majority opinion ties the hands of police.

"By holding as it does, the majority impermissibly restricts the police's ability to conduct reasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment for drugs that are secreted on an individual known to be carrying such drugs to prevent their loss," she wrote in the dissent.

I do love how the dissent says that they already know the individual is carrying drugs. If that's true, why not just throw them in jail? What's the point of the search?

Anyway, the guy has already served six years of his wrongful 10-year sentence, and it's hard to have too much sympathy for a crack dealer (accidental pun not intended, but nonetheless mildly funny), but I'm glad that the Court does value privacy and the presumption of innocence even if only a little.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

I'm so tired of hearing the FCC whine about the status of television. It has so little regard for free speech, free expression or just plain common sense, that I must admit I revel in the recent decision by the courts that prevents the FCC from fining stations when someone accidentally lets slip a bad word on live television.

The FCC isn't necessary at all. Frequencies should be owned by individuals. The only way the government should intervene is to enforce the property rights of the owners - much like you call the sherrif when someone trespasses on your lands.

Here is a little history of the FCC:

Radio voice broadcasts began in the US in November 1920, and within two years, there were 576 licensed broadcast stations.

In 1922, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover initiated a series of annual radio conferences, attended by major broadcasters and orchestrated by the Department of Commerce. At the first such conference, L.R. Krumm of Westinghouse complained that it was "perfectly possible to establish a so-called broadcasting station for about $500 or $1000 initial investment." The programming from these upstarts consisted of "nothing but phonograph records, and that sort of station can interfere very disastrously with such a station as we are trying to operate." And just in case his meaning wasn't clear, Krumm added, "I believe 12 good stations, certainly a maximum of 15, would supply most of the needs of the country."

Hoover began to withhold additional licenses, claiming the need to prevent interference among broadcasters. A 1923 federal court case, Hoover v. Intercity Radio, denied him the authority to withhold licenses, but allowed the Secretary to select times and wavelengths so as to minimize interference.

For the next three years, Hoover continued to ration broadcasting licenses by assigning frequency, geographic location, and time of day (in keeping with the Intercity verdict), and even by refusing (in defiance of Intercity) to process new license applicants.

Hoover's annual broadcast conferences continued and in 1925 they outlined a policy agenda in which they advocated a "public interest" standard for licensing.

So you see, the FCC was really created to protect friends of the government from having to actually compete in the market. Read the whole article - it really is insightful and explains how Hoover, when his regulatory scheme was challenged, created chaos by refusing to protect the property rights of frequency owners. Now, the FCC must scream about indecency and about the lack of shows that are beneficial to our children and our national education because, if these things were really in demand, we wouldn't need the FCC (What kind of backwards logic is that?).

Here is a great quote that sums up the attitude of the censors and bureaucrats at the FCC:

If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can’t restrict the use of the words 'fuck' and 'shit' during prime time, HOLLYWOOD will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want."